


"it feels so scary, getting old"

by talkwordytome



Series: Spellman Sisters' Mortuary [3]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: 19th Century, ALL the Spellman children need hugs probably, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood, Coming of Age, Gen, Hilda Spellman Needs A Hug, Hilda Spellman is too good and pure for this world, Or at the very least not a desperately sad ending, Pre-Canon, Sister-Sister Relationship, YES the ice skating scene is directly inspired by little women, Young Hilda, Young Zelda - Freeform, Zelda Spellman Needs A Hug, Zelda Spellman is Bad at Feelings, including edward, though being a boy his childhood was probably marginally better than his sisters', what of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23896069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkwordytome/pseuds/talkwordytome
Summary: The childhoods of Zelda & Hilda Spellman through the years, snapshot style.
Relationships: Hilda Spellman & Zelda Spellman
Series: Spellman Sisters' Mortuary [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1744618
Comments: 9
Kudos: 39





	"it feels so scary, getting old"

**Author's Note:**

> TW for depictions of bullying/hazing/violence.
> 
> In this fic I took some liberties regarding the canonical ages of Zelda and Hilda. I know they're both about 300 when the show begins in 2018, but I just feel so much more comfortable depicting 19th century life as opposed to 18th century life. 
> 
> In case any of you are curious about timeline/character ages, I arbitrarily decided that Edward's birthday is April of 1854, Zelda's birthday is July of 1856, and Hilda's is August of 1860. 
> 
> As I've mentioned in other fics, I think it's completely ridiculous that CAOS seems to imply that students don't start at the Academy until they're 16, and it's ESPECIALLY ridiculous when you realize that Quentin, that little ghost boy who died being harrowed, looks MAYBE 11 at the OLDEST, so I've made the executive decision that students start at the Academy when they're 11, like in American and British secondary schools.
> 
> Everything I know about boarding school I learned from Enid Blyton and JK Rowling so I am v v v sorry if there are any inaccuracies in how I depicted boarding school here!
> 
> This has NOT been beta'd because my faithful girlfriend/reader is but a sweet summer child and I did not wish to subject her to the angst that occurs in the latter half of the fic. Any and all mistakes are mine and mine alone!
> 
> Title is a lyric from the song "Ribs" by Lorde.

**_1\. (august 1860)_**

She gets to see the baby even before Father does. Men and boys aren’t meant to be part of a birth, the midwife says, and so Father and Edward are exiled to the great room. Zelda, though, is granted entry to Mother’s bedroom; she, too, will be a coven midwife one day, just like Mother is, and Grandmother before her. At four, Zelda is not yet old enough to assist, but she watches with detached, scientific curiosity. When the midwife requests a fresh bucket of hot water and more towels, Zelda dutifully obeys, determined to be useful. She is not a charming little girl, and has heard herself be described as plain more times than she cares to count, but finding ways to make herself useful is the one thing she already does better than anyone else. 

Mother moans and shrieks like a wounded animal when the midwife tells her it’s time for the final push. She has just enough presence of mind to snap at Zelda when Zelda claps her hands over her own ears. “Stop that nonsense,” she pants, glaring at Zelda. “Whatever else did you expect?”

The baby arrives just past the witching hour in a rush of blood and screaming. She’s slick and wrinkled, red-faced and squalling. She howls at the great and terrible injustice that is being alive. Her hair, matted with fluid, is white blonde and downy soft. She balls her little fists as the midwife removes her from Mother’s arms to be cleaned and swaddled. 

Later, as the sun is beginning to rise, Zelda stands next to the bassinet and watches the baby sleep. _Hildegard Antoinette Spellman_. Hildegard for Grandmother; Antoinette for Mother. It’s been decided that she will go by Hilda. _She is less ugly now than she was a few hours ago_ , Zelda thinks. Hilda is wearing a lacy white gown and a matching bonnet. Already she is a sweet, bonny babe, Mother and Father agree, pretty and plump and long-lashed. After Mother nursed her, Hilda immediately fell into an obedient, milk-drunk sleep.

 _So different from Zelda_ , Zelda heard Mother whisper shortly before she retired to bed with Father. _Do you remember how disagreeable she was? How she cried and cried from collick?_

Zelda scowls at the memory, then reaches out and pinches Hilda, hard, on one of her chubby legs. Hilda’s eyes immediately blink open. She opens her rosebud mouth and begins to cry. Zelda, startled, falls backward onto her bottom. “Be quiet,” Zelda hisses furiously, but Hilda continues to wail.

Zelda, scared of the retribution she will face should Father wake, hefts Hilda from her bassinet. She cradles Hilda in her arms like she has seen Mother do with the coven babes she helped birth. Hilda, searching for a breast to suckle and finding none, sucks on Zelda’s nightgown instead. Her eyes droop shut as she drifts back off. Zelda sways gently back and forth, rocking Hilda, until she is certain she is asleep, and then for a few minutes more, simply because.

**_2\. (april 1865)_**

Hilda, at four, is cherubic and rosy. She easily and effortlessly charms everyone she meets; she tells them about the different plants in their garden, the herbs she is growing in her nursery window box, the whimsical stories she’s invented about her various favorite animals. Edward, being a boy, is by default Mother and Father’s preferred child, but Hilda, with her blonde ringlets and china blue eyes, is indisputably the family favorite. 

Zelda, at eight, is a long tangle of ungainly limbs. She is stormy tempered and sour and entirely too bright for her own good, according to Father, who thinks girls are better suited to domestic tasks. Zelda does not care what he thinks; she picks up languages as easily as Hilda picks her messy bundles of posies, and she has already mastered nearly all of the rudimentary magick children are expected to learn prior to starting at the Academy of Unseen Arts. She spends hours poring over texts in the family library and dreams of the day when she will turn sixteen and finally be given her own grimoire. 

It is only Zelda and Hilda in the nursery now; Edward, ten years old and less than a year from spending his weekdays boarding at the Academy, graduated to his own bedroom three months ago. Zelda misses him as acutely as she would miss one of her own limbs were it to be amputated. She spent the first two weeks of his absence weeping angry, bitter tears onto her pillow every night as she fell asleep. He is only down the hall but he may as well exist in a different world entirely; he has become serious and haughty, and no longer has time to play silly games with baby sisters. 

Hilda’s companionship doesn’t replace Edward’s but it will have to suffice. At the very least she’s easy to boss around, Zelda supposes. She happily goes along with all of Zelda’s ideas, and though she sometimes cries when Zelda plays too rough or her stories become too frightening, she never once goes tattling to Mother and Father. 

Zelda adores and despises Hilda, often within the same action and breath. Hilda does not seem to notice, or if she does notice she doesn’t care. She doggedly follows Zelda everywhere like a friendlier, better natured shadow. She has the rare and innate ability to look at the world and assume it always has her best interests at heart, and that—perhaps more than anything else—is what enrages Zelda the most.

One afternoon in early spring they’re out playing in the woods. It’s the first truly nice day in months, the first morning since late October that they haven’t woken to a fine, glittering blanket of frost covering the grass. They’ve explored further than they usually do, well beyond the boundaries of where they are technically meant to stop, though enforcement of those boundaries is lax at best. Zelda ties a ratty strip of old muslin around Hilda’s eyes. “I’m going to spin you three times,” she says, “and then you’ll count to twenty and see if you can find me.”

Hilda nods, beaming under her blindfold. She loves this game because it usually ends in Zelda leaping out from her hiding spot and grabbing Hilda to tickle her, and being tickled is one of Hilda’s favorite pastimes. 

But as Hilda counts and Zelda searches for a hiding spot, a burst of meanness surges through her, boiling her blood like poison. She curls herself inside a hollow log, far past anywhere Hilda could realistically search while unable to see. 

She hears Hilda’s stumbling steps and her voice calling Zelda’s name, laughing and gay at first, but then hitching and rising with fear as a minute passes, then five, then ten, and Zelda still hasn’t been found. Zelda sits in her hollow, her knees pulled to her chest and her heart pounding in her ears. 

Zelda can tell by the halt in Hilda’s rhythm and the dull thud that follows when Hilda has tripped and fallen down. Hilda draws in a deep, shuddering breath and then begins to cry; loud, terrified sobs that startle ravens from their trees. Zelda counts slowly to ten before she emerges from her hiding spot. Hilda is huddled in the middle of a grassy clearing; her dress and stockings are muddied but she is otherwise unharmed. Her chin is quivering and she’s snuffling into her sleeve.

She sneaks up behind Hilda and grabs her shoulders. “Boo,” she deadpans when Hilda twitches and yelps. 

Zelda removes the blindfold when Hilda’s hands prove too clumsy to undo Zelda’s expertly tied knot. “I thought I lost you,” Hilda says, pouting up at Zelda. “I thought you were gone from me forever.”

Zelda pointedly ignores the abdominal pang that follows Hilda’s words. “Don’t be a ninny,” she says. “Where would I go?”  


On their walk back, though, Zelda does not hush Hilda’s non-stop chattering, and when Hilda tucks her soft, warm hand into Zelda’s own, Zelda does not pull away.

**_3\. (march 1867)_**

“Lie _still_ , Hildy!”

“I _am_ lying still!”

“You are not,” Zelda says crossly. “You’re fidgeting. It won’t work if you’re wiggling about like a worm.”

“What if you can’t get me back down?” Hilda whines from where she lies spreadeagle on the nursery floor. 

“If I can get you up then I can get you down, Hildy; don’t ask stupid questions.”

“But what if I go all the way up to the sky like a balloon?”

“The ceiling will stop you,” Zelda says absently, then checks the spell book she’s stolen from Edward’s bedroom. She closes her eyes, concentrating, and mutters a string of words under her breath. She waits a moment before opening them again. “Do you feel like you might levitate?” she asks Hilda.

“I’m not sure,” Hilda says. “What’s that meant to feel like?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Zelda snaps, slamming the book shut and tossing it across the room. “This isn’t working.”

Hilda sits up. “We could go play in the pet cemetery?” she suggests. 

“The pet cemetery is for babies,” Zelda sniffs, then brightens. “We should go skating.”

Hilda looks doubtfully out the window; it’s early March, and though there is still snow on the ground it’s warming rapidly, and they have been warned time and time again to stay off the pond when the ice starts to thin. “I don’t know,” she says nervously. “Is it safe?”

Zelda tosses her hair over her shoulder and shoots Hilda a disdainful look. “Of course it’s safe,” she scoffs. “You’re just a scared baby.”

Hilda’s face flushes an angry shade of maroon. Of the Spellman children her temper is the steadiest, but even she has her breaking points, and being called a baby is very much one of them. “I am _not_!” she shrieks. “Don’t _call_ me that!”

“Fine,” Zelda says, voice muffled as she searches under her bed for their ice skates. “I’ll stop if you come with me.”

They run out of the house, skates in hand, under a cornflower blue sky. It’s a cloudless day and the white hawkeye sun beams down faint warmth. Their breath puffs out, white and crystalline in the cold air. “I’ll race you!” Zelda calls, already bounding ahead, her skinny legs carrying her along quick as a young deer. 

By the time Hilda makes it to the pond Zelda is already wearing her skates. “We should stay at the edge,” Hilda says, strapping her own skates on. “That’s what Edward always says to do. He says that sometimes the ice in the middle isn’t strong enough even when it’s coldest outside.”

“Edward isn’t here,” Zelda says. “Besides, I _like_ going out into the middle. It’s too hard to practice my spinning if I only skate by the grass.”

She clomps onto the ice with as much grace and dignity she can muster; she’s a good skater, much better than Hilda, and picks up speed easily, her golden red hair streaming behind her like a flag. “Look Hildy!” she calls, laughing. “Watch, I can make a figure eight!”

But as Zelda is midway through her second loop, the black ice begins to creak and then crack. “Zelda--!” Hilda shouts, but it’s too late.

The ice gives way from beneath Zelda’s skates and she crashes into the freezing pond below. Hilda shrieks her alarm but there’s no one else around and there’s not enough time for her to run back to the house for Mother or Father. “Hildy!” Zelda screams, her head barely above water. “Hildy, help me, _please_ , I can’t stay up!”

Hilda grabs the longest branch she can find and edges on her stomach over to the hole in the ice. “Grab this,” Hilda says, “and I’ll try to pull you out!”

Zelda grips the branch in hands that are shaking from cold; one pull, two, and finally on the third Hilda manages to heave her halfway out of the water, enough that Zelda is able to crawl the rest of the way on her own. They scramble over to the grass, panting, Zelda shivering in her wet clothes. Hilda immediately throws her arms around Zelda, hugging her fiercely; she’s crying and is surprised when she realizes that Zelda is too.

“I was so scared,” Zelda whispers, and Hilda holds her even tighter.

“You’re _never_ allowed to do that again,” Hilda says. “Never _ever_.” 

Hilda removes her own coat and wraps it around Zelda’s shoulders. “I’ll take care of you,” she promises. “I’ll make sure you stay warm until we get home.”

Zelda gives Hilda a watery smile. “I know, Hildy,” she says. “You always do.”

**_4\. (october 1867)_**

For the first time in her seven years of being alive, Hilda is the only Spellman child left at home. Edward, thirteen and tall and strapping, has just begun his third year of schooling; Zelda, eleven and all sharp angles and even sharper tongue, has just begun her first. They started the first Monday in September; they marched off together to the Academy after breakfast, very purposeful and grown-up, Zelda’s hair in two long, heavy braids down her back. Hilda watched from the porch as they disappeared into the forest, wondering how she could possibly be homesick when she is already home.

She spent the entire summer begging and pleading for Zelda to let her come too; the night before Zelda left, Hilda sat on her bed and watched Zelda pack. “I’ll be good,” she promised, hiccuping with sobs. “I’ll stay in your room. You won’t even know I’m there.”

“You can’t come,” Zelda said irritably, folding dresses inside her trunk, “so stop asking me. You’ll go when you’re eleven just like everyone else.” 

“But that’s so very long from now,” Hilda sighed.

“Only four years,” Zelda said tartly. “Practically a blink. You’ll be fine.”

“I know _I’ll_ be fine,” Hilda said, “but what about you? You’re not even bringing Tom along. Who’s going to look after you?” Vinegar Tom, Zelda’s familiar and eleventh birthday present, thumped his tale balefully from his spot at the foot of Zelda’s bed.

“Familiars don’t come to the Academy,” Zelda said scornfully. “It isn’t done. And _I’ll_ look after myself, thank you very much.”

“When I go _I’m_ bringing my familiar with me,” Hilda replied sullenly.

Zelda rolled her eyes. “You don’t even have a familiar yet, and you will _not_ because I won’t let you. Everyone will laugh at you and you’ll make our entire family a joke,” she snapped.

That night, though, despite her bravado, Zelda still crawled into Hilda’s bed. They slept curled close together, the warm, sweetly fragrant, late summer air streaming in through the open nursery window. Zelda had been offered her own bedroom some months ago but had demurred, insisting that it seemed silly to move all her things when she was about to go to the Academy anyway, but Hilda isn’t so easily fooled.

It’s been nearly two months, and Hilda still can’t quite get a read on whether or not Zelda is happy at school. She certainly _acts_ happy when she comes home for weekend visits. She’s already at the top of all of her classes, and she brings home piles and piles of perfectly scored exams and essays. This earns her measured praise from Mother and even, occasionally, Father, which makes Zelda positively radiant with pride. To Hilda’s eye, though, Zelda looks tired and too thin, and when asked about friends Zelda always finds a way to change the subject.

* * *

Truthfully, Zelda despises school, every single moment of it. Her classes are too easy and she hates the other students, especially the boys, who yank on her braids and knock her books from her arms when she moves through the hallways. She never sees Edward, who is golden boy popular and busy with his own studies and his own friends. She misses, desperately and in spite of herself, Vinegar Tom and especially Hilda; she misses the nursery, with its big fireplace and the climbing roses wallpaper and the ornate dollhouse tucked away in a corner. She misses eating buttered cinnamon toast for breakfast and taking afternoon tea. She misses telling scary stories with Hilda before they fall asleep, and what she misses perhaps more than anything else is having someone see her--really, truly see her--and think that she is the most special and wonderful person to ever live.

She is harrowed during her second week. A group of older girls yank her from her bed and drag her down to one of the dungeons. It’s cold and dark and damp; she can hear rats and spiders scurrying around the floor. She’s wearing only her summer nightgown, and she shivers, gooseflesh rising on the exposed skin of her arms. She refuses to cry, though, not even a single tear. She sits on the floor, expressionless and unmoving, until she is freed the following morning. The older girls give her looks of grudging admiration.

Zelda does not cry when she’s made to drink a foul tasting potion and spends the entire subsequent night being violently sick into a chamberpot. She does not cry when she discovers the dead, bloody rabbit that’s been left under her sheets. She does not cry when she’s locked inside the iron maiden, nor does she cry when she’s blindfolded, tied up, and made to spend the night deep in the forest as it rains and rains. She’s sick, feverish and coughing, for nearly two weeks after that final trial, though she stoically keeps that information to herself. She suffers through the entire ordeal grimly dry-eyed, and afterwards she achieves something of a mythical status among the Academy’s first years. 

She allows herself to cry exactly once, when she is visiting home the weekend after her harrowing. Lying safely in her childhood bed, she releases quiet, miserable tears onto the fabric of her pillowcase. She’s not certain she’s only crying about the harrowing, though that’s part of it; it feels more as though she’s crying for a part of herself that she lost without even knowing she was losing it.

“Zelds?” Hilda says, sitting up, her hair rumpled and her nightgown askew. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Hildy,” Zelda says, sniffling. “Just leave me alone.”

She hears Hilda slip out of bed and pad across the wooden floor. She clambers into Zelda’s bed and crawls underneath the covers. She wraps her arms around Zelda’s neck and kisses her cheek. “You can cry,” she whispers. “I’ll hold you until you fall back to sleep.”

Neither of them reference it aloud the following morning, though Zelda catches Hilda’s eye at the breakfast table and carefully mouths _thank you_.

**_5\. (december 1869)_**

Edward and Zelda get to spend two weeks at home for the winter holidays. They return the Saturday before the solstice; Hilda stands on the porch and watches them come racing towards the house from the woods, red-cheeked from the cold and whooping. Edward is fifteen now, only a year away from his dark baptism, and usually he would refuse to participate in something so childish, but he’s as excited as his little sisters about the upcoming celebrations.

Zelda—thirteen years old, still long-legged but ever so slightly more graceful—overcomes Edward just before they reach the porch. She slaps her hand onto one of the wooden posts that connect it to the roof. “I win,” she pants. “I beat you.”

Edward ignores her and instead sweeps Hilda into his arms. “How’s my favorite girl?” he asks, tipping her upside down. Hilda giggles hysterically.

Zelda watches them, scowling, as they walk inside. 

The solstice that year falls on a Tuesday. As high priest, Father is responsible for leading the service, and the rest of the Spellmans sit in the front row, dressed in their finest attire. After the service ends, the women all comment on how handsome and grown up Edward is getting and tell Mother that he _will make such a fine high priest someday, just like his father_. They coo and fuss over Hilda, who looks like a little doll with her curls and her flouncy red dress. Zelda, severe in a black velvetine headband and simple green pinafore, absorbs all this silently, an inscrutable expression fixed on her pale face.

Zelda is the same and she is not the same. She is _at a difficult age_ , at least according to Mother, though what, precisely, that means no one seems very compelled to explain. It didn’t seem such a difficult age when Edward was thirteen. Sometimes when Hilda and Zelda are playing, Zelda will stop in the middle of their game, sigh, and disappear into the woods for several hours. She is infuriatingly vague when she returns. “I had things to do, Hildy,” she says, waving Hilda off. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Only because _you_ won’t explain it to me,” Hilda mutters. 

Zelda spends much of her holidays squirreled away in the library, reading and studying. “I’m a third year now, Hilda,” Zelda sternly reminds Hilda when she interrupts, looking for a playmate. “This is when the work starts to become difficult. Anyway, _you_ should be studying too, you know. You start at the Academy year after next. You don’t want to fall behind.”

But Hilda doesn’t want to study and finds that she doesn’t much care if she falls behind the other students. All she really wants is for Zelda to start acting more like her big sister, and less like a stranger. They’re sharing the nursery again, but to Hilda, it feels as though Zelda is miles and miles further away than she ever is when she’s away at school.

“Zelds,” Hilda says, her voice wheedling. She leans her head onto Zelda’s shoulder. “It’s the _holidays_. Why does it even matter if you study right now or not? I bet no one else is studying right now, and you’re the best in your year besides.”

Zelda jerks her shoulder out from underneath Hilda with an annoyed huff. “I don’t care what _they’re_ doing,” she says scathingly. “I care what _I’m_ doing. But you’re only a child; you couldn’t possibly understand.”

Indignation flares in Hilda’s chest. “ _You’re_ a child, too,” she says heatedly, “and you _always_ say I won’t understand something but then you never give me the chance to even _try_.”

Zelda shuts her book with a sharp snap and slams it onto the table. She turns in her chair so she is facing Hilda, her eyes blazing with fury. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she says, her narrow shoulders shaking, “to always have to be bright, or talented, or the best at everything, because you’re a _girl_ ,” she spits out the word girl like it’s sour, “but you’re not a girl in the right way. I’m _never_ going to be the sort of girl Mother and Father wish for me to be, and you _can’t_ understand, Hilda, because you--it’s always been so _easy_ for you.” 

Zelda wipes roughly at her tear tracked cheeks with the heel of her hand. “You--you’re so...so sweet, and pretty, and...and _good_ , and everyone will always like you, and it’s all so incredibly, unbelievably unfair,” she whispers. 

Zelda leans forward, buries her head in her arms, and weeps. Hilda, stricken, wants very much to hold Zelda, wipe her eyes, and tell her that everything is going to be alright, but she has a sinking feeling that Zelda would not allow it. “People like you, Zelds,” she says instead, the works weak even to her own ears.

Zelda does not answer, only continues sobbing onto the cover of her book. Hilda waits a few long moments that feel like hours, then turns and slowly begins to leave the library. Just as she’s about to go through the door, however, in a voice that’s terribly weary and small, Zelda says, “Just because you like me, Hildy, doesn’t mean other people do.”

**_6\. (autumn 1871)_**

“Move over.”

“Hilda, _what_ are you doing? Go back to your own bed; I’m trying to sleep.”

“I’m nervous,” Hilda whispers, rolling onto her side so she can see Zelda, “about tomorrow.”

“What, starting school?” Zelda asks without opening her eyes. “You’ll be fine.”

“What if the food is disgusting?” Hilda asks.

“It _is_ disgusting, Hildy.”

“What if I’m the worst in all my classes?”

Zelda snorts. “I’m sure there will be first years who are bigger dunderheads than you, sister,” she says.

Hilda ignores this remark. “What if I miss Mother and Father?” she asks.

“Then you’ll see them during the weekends, Hildy,” Zelda says impatiently. “What does it _matter_? You have to go all the same, even if you hate it.”

“Do _you_ hate it, Zelds?” Hilda asks.

Zelda is silent for so long that Hilda assumes she’s fallen back to sleep, or at the very least doing a convincing job of pretending she’s fallen back to sleep. But eventually she says, “Not really. I—no, I don’t. It’s…what it is, Hildy. It’s fine.”

“Zelda,” Hilda whispers, “are they going to harrow me?”

Zelda turns so her back is to Hilda. “Zelds,” Hilda says urgently, shaking her, “ _are_ they?”

“Whatever you do,” Zelda says, still facing away from Hilda, “no matter what happens, you can’t let anyone see how much it upsets you.”

Hilda spends her first four days at the Academy paralyzed by fear so strong it makes her taste bile in the back of her throat. At night sleep evades her, so she nods off during her classes, earning snickers from the other first years when the teacher shakes her irritably awake. At mealtimes she is too nauseated to manage anything more than soup and dry toast. When she sees Zelda in the hallways, she always catches her eye, hoping for words of encouragement or a smile or even just a nod, but Zelda always pointedly ignores her.

It happens on the fifth day. A collection of girls--big girls, all of them fourth years and older--march into Hilda’s room and snatch her covers off so roughly that she falls onto the stone floor. A hand grips Hilda’s upper arm so tightly it hurts; its owner yanks Hilda into a standing position. Hilda looks up and finds herself staring into a face so familiar it makes her stomach clench: _Zelda_. 

“Come on,” Zelda commands, her mouth twisted, as the other girls whisper and laugh. 

“Zelda--” Hilda whimpers but Zelda silences her with a single, furious look.

Hilda is locked inside a dungeon until the following evening. When she is released, she stumbles on unsteady legs back to her room. She gets into bed and curls herself into the smallest ball her body will allow, shivering violently. She has no idea what to expect from the rest of the harrowing; Zelda always refused to speak of what hers was like. Hilda is smart enough to know that the worst is yet to come. She knows she should do something to fortify herself, to prepare, but she simply does not possess the strength.

Hilda, as it turns out, remembers very little of the harrowing itself; years later, all she will be able to recall is Zelda’s brutality, the flat coldness in her eyes as she watched Hilda suffer. Hilda is ill, desperately ill, for weeks and weeks afterward. She is sick enough that she is eventually sent home to recover after fainting in her beginning bubbling class, sick enough that Mother and Father murmur that perhaps Hilda should only return to school as a day student, that perhaps Hilda shouldn’t return to the Academy at all. 

When all is said and done, Hilda spends nearly a month recovering in the nursery. She remembers only bits and pieces of this period, too: faint, milky sunlight streaming in through the window, cool hands checking her for fever, worried voices, the oddly pleasurable sensation that if she wished to she could simply close her eyes and fade away. 

Late one night, towards the end of her convalescence, she wakes to someone sitting next to her bed. Long, thick red hair cascading down the back of a white nightgown. Bright green eyes that shone in the dim light of the nursery. “Zelda?” Hilda whispers. “Are you really here?”

Zelda says nothing, simply slides her body under the blankets so she is in the bed with Hilda. She turns over so she’s cradling Hilda within the crescent of her body. She holds Hilda’s hand and pets her hair until Hilda falls into the most peaceful sleep she has had in months. 

When Hilda wakes the next morning, though, Zelda is gone, leaving nothing behind to prove that the entire thing wasn’t just a lovely, comforting dream.

**_7\. (july 1872)_**

The evening before her dark baptism, Zelda sits at her vanity, carefully brushing her hair. Her dress is already picked out, laid carefully out on a chair, along with an elegant string of black pearls--a dark baptism gift from Mother. She has read all the texts; she has completed all the purifying rituals. She is ready. She has been ready for this moment, it feels, for her entire life.

At nearly sixteen, Zelda has finally settled into her own skin. She is still tall, but willowy instead of gangly; slender instead of angular. She began to grow breasts when she was fourteen, just after her first monthly cycle, and she is satisfied with how comely, how soft, they have turned her. Her fair skin is smooth and unblemished. She is still not popular at school--she knows she never will be--but boys have started to notice her. She is intelligent enough that even those who don’t like her at the very least respect her, and the ones that don’t respect her fear her. Being respected, Zelda has decided, is far preferable to being liked, anyway.

“Zelds?” 

Zelda looks over her shoulder. Hilda is hovering uncertainly in the doorway. They have been uneasy around each other ever since Hilda’s harrowing; they never speak of it, but the events of that week--and all the weeks that came after--hang heavy between them like a lead weight. Hilda, nearly a month away from turning twelve, has a face that still carries its baby roundness. She is not skilled in the art of disguising how she feels; her thoughts, her emotions, all flash across that round face like lighthouse beacons. At this moment, Hilda looks hopeful, and scared.

“What is it, Hilda?” Zelda asks, and Hilda’s posture relaxes when Zelda’s voice is decidedly patient and warm.

“Are you excited about tomorrow?” Hilda asks, walking into the room and sitting down on her bed. They still share what was once the nursery, though their toys have long since been hidden away in the attic or discarded. Sometimes, though, Hilda absconds to the attic and indulges in a quiet, solitary tea party.

“Yes, of course I am,” Zelda says, resuming her brushing. “It’s one of the most important moments in a witch’s life, Hilda. You know that.”

“Here, let me do it,” Hilda says, taking the silver brush from Zelda’s hands. “You have such pretty hair.”

“I know,” Zelda says, though there’s no arrogance in the way she says it. “Mother always said it was the only truly lovely thing about me.”

Hilda frowns. “You’ve always been beautiful, Zelda,” she says firmly, “even if other people were stupid and couldn’t see it.”

Zelda offers Hilda a vague, half-hearted smile. “Thank you, Hildy,” she says, and Hilda’s heart warms at the use of her childhood nickname, “that’s kind of you to say.”

“It’s true,” Hilda insists stubbornly, then sets the brush down on the vanity. “There. Now you’re perfect.”

The window is open, and the air smells exactly as it did when they were little girls, all clover and honeysuckle and dew. Hilda hears cricketsong, and the noises small, nocturnal animals make as they scurry across the yard. On Zelda’s bed, Vinegar Tom snuffles in his sleep, his leg twitching. “Let’s go outside,” Hilda says suddenly.

Zelda’s eyebrows quirk upwards. “Whatever for?” she asks.

“It’s a full moon,” Hilda says. “We haven’t watched a moonrise in ages.”

“It’s late,” Zelda points out. “The moonrise is already done.”

“Well,” Hilda says impatiently, “then we can just enjoy looking at the sky. Why do you always need a _reason_ , Zelds? Isn’t it nice sometimes to simply _be_? To enjoy things only for the sake of enjoying them?”

She takes a blanket from the chest at the foot of her bed and walks to the door. “I’m going outside,” she says. “Join me or don’t.”

Hilda spreads the blanket on the damp grass and lies down. The sky is cloudless, and the muggy, oppressive heat of the day has faded into a pleasant balminess. She quietly names constellations as she sees them: Cassiopeia, the queen; Artemis, the hunter, drawing back her mighty bow.

Nearly an hour has passed before Zelda joins her on the blanket. “I thought you weren’t going to come,” Hilda says.

“Me too,” Zelda whispers. “Do you remember, when you were about five, that time you told me that you were _certain_ you could touch the moon if you reached out at it from your window?”

Hilda laughs softly. “Yes,” she says. “You told me stop being stupid.”

Zelda makes a small humming noise, the meaning of which Hilda can’t quite ascertain. They fall silent. Hilda continues searching for constellations, and when she can’t remember the name for one, she makes a name up herself. A mythology that’s all her own. 

“Hildy?” Zelda says after what feels like a very long time.

“Hmm?”

But Zelda does not continue speaking. Instead, she takes Hilda’s hand in her own and squeezes it. Hilda squeezes back. It is the closest Zelda will ever get to an apology, Hilda knows, and it is not enough, but it is what Zelda has to give her. Hilda will find a way to make it suffice, to let it fill her and nourish her as best as it can. 

There is a part of Hilda that still thinks if she were to reach high enough, she might pull down bits of star and moon and sky. Lying next to her big sister, their hearts drumming an identical rhythm, she thinks: _this, now, is close enough_.

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoyed writing this quite a bit, so let me know if you're interested in reading more fics like it!


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